Photo by Robert Noles
By Morgan Bryce
Staff Reporter
Opelika Main Street received five awards at the Alabama Main Street Conference of Excellence awards banquet in Birmingham last month.
According to Pam Powers-Smith, director of Opelika Main Street, the city competed with cities like Birmingham and Alex City for recognition. She said she was proud of the awards that Opelika’s organization received during the banquet.
“We’ve only entered the past three years in the competition, and this is the most that we’ve won at the conference for sure,” Powers-Smith said. “It shows that we’ve come a long in the past five to 10 years, and the most important thing too is that we were up against larger programs and cities with larger budgets than ours. That night after the banquet, I realized that we do a lot with what little we have, and that’s what makes me proud and makes the work we do matter.”
The following is the list of awards that Opelika Main Street brought home:
– The Excellence in Volunteer Development award for the city’s intern program
– Excellence in Downtown Marketing to marketing firm Verge Pipe Media
– Excellence in Promotion for the Christmas in a Railroad Town event
– Excellence in Planning and Public Space for the Wayfinding Signage Project
– Community Award to City Development administrator Lisa Thrift
Looking ahead, Powers-Smith said her means of growing and developing the downtown area have not changed.
“We’re going to keep working hard and continue to keep on keeping on with what we’ve been doing and be careful about smart growth in our downtown. We want to get the right businesses down here and we are going to keep growing,” Powers-Smith said. “We have a lot of stuff coming to downtown in the next 12 months and I’m super excited about that.”
